Charles Kingsley

“ The shadows of the crags, though paling every moment before the spreading dawn, still shrouded all the gorge in gloom. A winding line of haze slept above the course of the rivulet. The plumes of the palm-trees hung motionless, as if awaiting in resignation the breathless blaze of the approaching day. At length, among the green ridges of the monastery garden, two gray figures rose from their knees, and began, with slow and feeble strokes, to break the silence by the clatter of their hoes among the pebbles.
'These beans grow wonderfully, brother Aufugus. ”

“ It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make a God after our own image, and fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love.'
'Thou speakest rather as a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic. For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. ”

“ That a monk should not busy his brain with painting spectres, or give himself up for lost; but rather be cheerful, as one who knows that he is redeemed, and in the hands of the Lord, where the Evil One has no power to hurt him. "For," he used to say, "the demons behave to us even as they find us. If they see us cast down and faithless, they terrify us still more, that they may plunge us in despair. But if they see us full of faith, and joyful in the Lord, with our souls filled with the glory which shall be, then they shrink abashed, and flee away in confusion." ”

“ I have known those, too, who have been so puffed up by those very penances which were meant to humble them, that they have despised all means of grace, as though they were already perfect, and refusing even the Holy Eucharist, have lived in self-glorying dreams and visions suggested by the evil spirits. One such I knew, who, in the madness of his pride, refused to be counselled by any mortal man— saying that he would call no man master: and what befell him? ”

“ Well, friend!—and what if thou art troubled at times by anxieties and schemes for this brother and for that? Better to be anxious for others than only for thyself. Better to have something to love—even something to weep over—than to become in some lonely cavern thine own world,— perhaps, as more than one whom I have known, thine own God.'
'Do you know what you are saying?' asked Arsenius in a startled tone.
'I say, that by fleeing into solitude a man cuts himself off from all which makes a Christian man ”

“ Men have lived like the beasts already, that they might at the same time live like the angels—and why should not I also?'
'And thou art the wise man of the world—the student of the hearts of others—the anatomizer of thine own? Hast thou not found out that, besides a craving stomach, man carries with him a corrupt heart? ”

“ They are spirits of evil, and therefore lying spirits. Were they good spirits they would speak to thee only in pity, forgiveness, encouragement. But be they ghosts or demons, they must be evil, because they are accusers, like the Evil One himself, the accuser of the saints. He is the father of lies, and his children will be like himself. ”